Excerpt from As Always: Memoir of a Life in Writing

Phyllis Aronoff, MA (Eng.) 92, translates fiction, non-fiction and poetry from French to English. Her solo translations include Message Sticks by Joséphine Bacon and The Wanderer by Régine Robin (Jewish Literary Award for Fiction).

Howard Scott, BA (translation) 79, MA 84, lives in Montreal and translates poetry, fiction and non-fiction. His translation of L’Euguélionne by Louky Bersianik won the Governor General’s Literary Award in 1997.

Together, Scott and Aronoff have translated several books by Madeleine Gagnon; conversations between Victor-Lévy Beaulieu and Margaret Atwood; A Slight Case of Fatigue by Stéphane Bourguignon; and many non-fiction works. The Great Peace of Montreal of 1701 by Gilles Havard won the QWF Translation Award in 200, and in 2009 they were shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award.

Aronoff has served as president of the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada (LTAC) and as its representative on the Public Lending Right Commission. Scott is a past president of the LTAC and has a black belt in aikido.

Excerpt from As Always: Memoir of a Life in Writing (Talonbooks) by Madeleine Gagnon

We had grown up in one of the harshest places in French Canada of the time: the archdiocese of Rimouski, run with an iron hand but no velvet glove by Archbishop Courchesne, a brilliant man — they’re the worst — aligned body and soul with the equally rigid, erudite Pope Pius XII, with his repressive political and sexual morality. It was a time of the Church dominant and triumphant, when our village, Amqui, was subject to the law and order of the boss and priest Nazaire Caron, who ruled for some forty years over his obedient flock. Today, these men would be called fundamentalists. They laid down the law. Applied the dogmas decreed in Rome. Reigned over their people of sheep and ewes, great shepherds for the Lord.

And girls had the fewest freedoms of all. Had no right to learn to swim. Nor to play tennis or any other sport. The boys in the classical colleges would come back every summer with tales of their athletic feats, which we poor girls could only admire and envy. There was a Boy Scout troop but no Girl Guide troop, despite the journey my friends and I made to the archdiocese of Rimouski to plead for one to be established, a request that was refused without any discussion, with the peremptory authority typical of the time. We had come back to the village determined to secretly form our own troop, with the support of our mothers and of the provincial commissioner, Blandine Neault, to whom I had written. As she requested, we sent the money for our dues, and she mailed us a huge parcel containing the uniforms we had dreamed of, in which we paraded down the main street every week: regulation hat, short skirt, belt with a dagger (a dagger that gave you strength and power!), whistle, and neckerchief, everything needed to impress and defy the adults, and frighten some of them. I became the leader of the troop of girls aged between twelve and fourteen. Of course, we had no chaplain. But it was decided that I would fill that role, and I did so willingly.

At that time, in that archdiocese, dance had been proclaimed a mortal sin from every pulpit. We danced, of course, at Camp Cartier on Saturday night, but our hearts were divided, half in heaven, half in hell.

I remember a story that was often recounted by the adults: Papa’s younger sister Gisèle was happily riding a bicycle belonging to one of her brothers and she met Father Caron walking, as always, with his cane and wearing his big black felt hat. He was coming toward her as she went down a hill at full speed, her hair and her skirt flying in the wind, and she heard him shout “Shameless hussy” and felt a blow on her legs from his cane. He shouted, “Go home, you’re not allowed to use that machine, it’s reserved for the stronger sex. You will come to confession on Saturday.”

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